In the past, vehicles such as wheel chairs and baby carriages have been joined to the rear portion of a bicycle-like device so that the vehicle could be powered by the rider of the bicycle-like portion--see, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,830,388 (Wang); 4,770,431 (Kulik); 2,482,585 (Hauptman) and 1,661,257 (Kirch). Such approaches suffer from two disadvantages if applied to provide temporary power for a child's go-cart. First, extensive modification of the bicycle is often required to couple it to the other vehicle. This makes it unsuitable to satisfy the more or less spontaneous desire on the part of an adult and child to power the child's go-cart using the adult's bike on a given day while, allowing both devices to be converted back to independent use on short notice--that is, it is unlikely that the adult will undertake the effort required to couple his/her bicycle to the child's go-cart to "go for a ride" if substantial effort is required to couple the bicycle to the go-cart before the ride and then additional substantial effort is required immediately thereafter so that the bicycle and go-cart remain available for independent use.
The second disadvantage associated with the approaches disclosed in the aforementioned patents, when applied to recreational use with a go-cart, is that the passenger in the vehicle has a passive role since the rider of the bicycle provides both the power and the steering for the vehicle. While this approach may be desireable, or even necessary, with respect to the handicapped and infant occupants of the wheel chairs and baby carriages of the prior art vehicles, it is unsuitable for use in go-carts with active young child who are easily bored with passivity.
Consequently, it would be desirable to provide a recreational vehicle that could be easily formed by temporarily integrating a conventional bicycle with a go-cart and that allowed the occupant of the go-cart to take an active role in operating the vehicle.